Three Months of Travel: Istanbul

Location: Istanbul, Turkey
Duration: 5 days
Population: 14,377,019

It's Europe. It's Asia. It's the Middle East. It's none of these. Prayers are called from the minarets starting at 5:00 am, but you can't hear them inside the nightclubs. The men are hairy and proud. The women are bronzed and beautiful. Salads are strange. There are burkas and there are midriffs. The state of the art metro system runs below cobblestone streets. Traffic is unbearable. There's basically no crime if you don't count taxi drivers preying on tourists with slight of hand. It's not really clean. Not really dirty. Not really fun. Not really boring. It is the incomparable city. It is the center of the world.

By the Bosphorus on the European side. Over there across the bridge, Asia.

You can smoke pretty much anywhere in Istanbul. It was kind of cool to see ashtrays on tables again.

A typical salad. It's like ten different things going on. I can identify about four of them. I think I enjoyed as many.

There are lots of street cats in Istanbul. Here are a couple of sweet boys.

At the historic Blue Mosque built in 1616. You have to take your shoes off and carry them around with you in a plastic bag. Women have to cover their heads to enter. You can Google to see what the inside looks like, but I'm pretty sure it can't be fully captured on any camera.

Istanbul.

Three Months of Travel: London Round 3

The line to get into the UK looked more than an hour long. Luckily, I wasn't headed there.

Three Months of Travel: Alexandria Round 3

Thirty six hours in town and lucky enough to have lunch with Wes and Tamires.

Three Months of Travel: Campos do Jordão

Location: Campos do Jordão, Brazil
Duration: 2 days
Population: 49,512
Nickname: Brazilian Switzerland

Two and half hours later, our bus wound its way up the mountains that were, just a little while ago, lining the horizon. Dani and I were getting out of the big city for our one year anniversary. She said this was a place worth going. A little town high up in the Mantiqueira Mountains called Campos do Jordão. We were almost there.

Campos is one of many communities in Brazil founded by the Germans. The main industry here is tourism. Not that there's a ton to see or do. There's German architecture and there's Brazilian architecture. Side by side in some cases. There's a chocolate factory and plenty of good restaurants. The real thrill of it all was summed up by Dani in two words: It's cold.

I forgot to bring my jacket and regretted it immediately. The sun set on the first night and the temperature free-fell through the 70s, 60s and 50s before finally coasting to a stop at 41 degrees. We were walking around the little downtown at the time, me wearing just a long-sleeve shirt. I could see my breath.

We found a nice shopkeeper preparing to close up. I bought a kind-of-ridiculous-pleather jacket and a sleek sweater. With the exchange rate, the total was just US $60. The day before, the news announced that the country had officially entered a recession. The bundled up tourists of Campos, happy and prosperous, didn't seem disturbed. The locals, however, looked a little more fragile. The Winter tourist season only had a few more weekends to bear.

Campos is sweet and small and full of beer and chocolate. Our hotel was from a different time and our reasonably-priced suite was bigger than our apartment in São Paulo, which to be fair, isn't saying a lot. Temperatures got up to about 90 during the day and were half that at night. We went on walks and played air hockey and mini golf. It was a nice town to visit, but it was even nicer to be one year older with the girl I love.

 A walk along the train tracks in Campos.

Dinner at La Gália.

Downtown Campos do Jordão.

Our room at the Flat Hotel Palazzo Reale.

Hotel.

Dani in downtown Campos.

I'm not sure that's how it's played.

Dani's first game of mini golf. Hole 17: the nearly-impossible "pyramid."

Adeus, Campos.